1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to arrangements for supporting and adjusting seats in vehicles, and more particularly, is directed to an improvement in an arrangement for supporting a seat in a vehicle to be movable in a direction of the length of a vehicle body and adjusting a position of the seat.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In general, a front seat provided in a vehicle is mounted through a sliding mechanism on a floor panel of a vehicle body so as to be slid for positional adjustment in a direction of the length of the vehicle body. The positional adjustment of the front seat in the vehicle may be carried out manually by a driver who takes the front seat and intend to obtain more comfortable condition on the front seat.
For adjusting the position of the front seat in the vehicle, the driver is required to have a relatively uneasy manual labor in a narrow space on the front seat. Accordingly, for the purpose of release the driver from such troublesome adjusting job, there has been proposed a power front seat system in which a front seat is driven to slide for positional adjustment thereof by a motor operative with electric power supplied from a battery provided in the vehicle or a generator driven by an engine of the vehicle, and the power front seat system is now apt to be widespread among passenger vehicles.
In the power front seat system, it is usual that a driving unit including the motor is disposed under a seat cushion of the front seat, as shown in the Japanese utility model application published before examination under publication number 60/81134. Such a structure that the driving unit is put in a space under the seat cushion results in a problem that the driving unit prevents the front seat used in the power front seat system from being lowered even though the front seat is required to be positioned as low as possible. Further, since the space under the seat cushion of the front seat cannot be formed to be large enough usually, there is another disadvantage that a specific driving unit which is designed to be especially compact is necessary and it is not easy to place the driving unit under the seat cushion of the front seat.